...concession, which strengthened us and fragmented the forces of international imperialism).

The Mensheviks cry out that the food tax, freedom of trade, the permission for concessions and state capitalism mean the collapse of communism. To these Mensheviks there has been added abroad the former communist Lévi; this Lévi had to be defended as long as the mistakes he made could be attempted to be explained as a reaction to a series of mistakes committed by the "Left" communists, especially in March 1921 in Germany; this Lévi cannot be defended when, instead of acknowledging his error, he slides into Menshevism along the entire line.

To the shouting Mensheviks we shall point out quite simply at least this: that as far back as spring 1918 the communists proclaimed and defended the idea of a bloc, an alliance with state capitalism against the petty-bourgeois element. Three years ago! In the first months of Bolshevik victory! The Bolsheviks already possessed sobriety then. And since that time no one has been able to refute the correctness of our sober accounting of the forces at our disposal.

This Lévi, who has slid into Menshevism, advises the Bolsheviks (whose defeat by capitalism he "predicts" in the same way as all philistines, democrats, social-democrats and the like predicted our doom in the event that we dispersed the Constituent Assembly!) to turn for aid to the entire working class! For, you see, up to now only a part of it has helped them!

Here Lévi coincides in a remarkable way with those semi-anarchists and loudmouths, in part with some of the former "Workers' Opposition," who love to speak loud phrases on the theme that the Bolsheviks now "do not believe in the forces of the working class." Both Mensheviks and anarchistically-inclined elements turn this concept of "the forces of the working class" into a fetish, being unable to think about its actual, concrete content. In place of the study and analysis of this content there is substituted declamation.

The gentlemen from the II [International]—when they held power in the state apparatus, they did not believe in the forces of the working class. When we said this about the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Co., this was not a phrase on our part. Everyone knows that the October Revolution in fact brought forth new forces, a new class—that the best representatives of the proletariat now govern Russia, created the army, led it, created local administration and so forth, direct industry and so on. If there are bureaucratic distortions in this administration, we do not conceal this evil, but expose it, fight against it. Whoever, in the struggle against the distortion of the new system, forgets its content, forgets that the working class has created and is leading a state of the Soviet type, simply does not know how to think and casts words to the wind.

But the "forces of the working class" are not limitless. If now the inflow of fresh forces from the working class is weak, sometimes very weak, if contrary to all decrees, appeals, agitation, contrary to all orders about "advancing non-party members" the inflow of forces is nonetheless weak, then to get by with declamation about "lack of belief in the forces of the working class" means descending to empty verbosity.

Without a certain "breathing space" these new forces cannot exist; otherwise they will not accumulate slowly; otherwise, on the basis of restored large-scale industry (that is, speaking more precisely and concretely, on the basis of electrification), they have nowhere to come from.

After the greatest, unprecedented in the world exertions—the working class in a small-peasant ruined country, the working class, which suffered greatly from declass­ification—needs an interval of time for new forces to grow, to strengthen themselves, for old and worn forces to be "repaired." The creation of a military and state apparatus capable of victoriously endure the trials of 1917–1921—is a great matter, which has occupied, seized, exhausted the real (not in the declamation of loudmouths existing) "forces of the working class." One must understand this and reckon with the necessity, or rather: with the inevitability of a slower growth of new forces of the working class.